As repeatedly has been the case, with the help of the Egyptians, Israel and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad appear to have reached a cease-fire after approximately five days of shelling and reprisals between the Israeli Defense Forces and the militants in Gaza. Initially, Islamic Jihad’s shelling of Israel was a response to the death of a Palestinian activist prisoner, Khader Adnan, who died in an Israeli jail after a hunger strike. This was followed by a targeted attack by the Israeli Air Force in the middle of the night on three military commanders of the Islamic Jihad. This strike was followed by retaliatory attacks by Islamic Jihad followed by subsequent attacks, counterattacks, attempted cease-fires and now apparently one that appears to be holding. This series of almost annual pointless tit-for-tat rocket shelling to and from Gaza persists with no end in sight.
(At this moment, there is even some concern that the shelling might resume on Thursday, when Israel celebrates the re-unification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War. Jerusalem Day is marked must demonstratively with a flag waving march of young religious Zionists parading through the Old City of Jerusalem.)
For the forces in Gaza, these periodic attacks permit the various groups to sustain themselves and justify their rivalry, demonstrating to their own people the strength and commitment they have to the cause. The modus operandi of the Palestinian forces with persistent episodes of rocket firing, ironically, inflicts casualties not caused only by Israeli reprisals but especially by mis-fired Palestinian rockets which land in Gaza. Meanwhile, no one is pursuing a political solution that would to be satisfactory to the Israelis or any of the forces in Gaza. Ironically, it is the work stoppage for the Palestinians in Gaza—those who work in Israel primarily—who also endure significant economic loss.
From the Israeli perspective, the need to demonstrate its enormous military superiority is pointless. No legitimate military strategist truly believes that the Palestinians are able to challenge Israel’s remarkable intelligence and its pinpoint, targeted responses to the attacks. (All the potential Israeli targets undoubtedly are tracked on a regular basis, ready to respond to a potential terrorist situation, should there be a need.)
These regular confrontations with the Palestinians suggest that Israeli Governments repeatedly—not only Netanyahu’s and not only because the current one is an especially hardline right-wing coalition—frequently seize a moment during internal domestic crises to create a security distraction. They use such an event to divert the public focus and bring them to coalesce behind the national leadership.
While one need not merely be cynical about some callous Israeli leadership to suggest this, but the reality is that Israelis do live in a constant state of terrorist attacks. Domestically, Israel is in the midst of a tense domestic confrontation. Netanyahu’s Government is at a clear crossroads, over the conscription bill to formalize military exemptions for the charedim; over the need to finesse a national budget by the end of May; as well as to complete its work on judicial reform. Responding to Islamic Jihad’s rocket launching following the self-inflicted death of a Palestinian prisoner thus can be seen as the latest example of political gamesmanship. The result, however, is that these events only further distract as well from any efforts to move toward elevating the parties to seek a more constructive modus vivendi.
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There is a curious sidebar to all the regular, almost annual Israeli confrontations with Palestinian units in Gaza. While the United Nations Security Council gets called into an emergency session, most of the public is totally unaware and/or uninterested in another low-level Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. Actual evidence of the meaninglessness of these attacks can be attested to by the minimal coverage that these attacks receive in most of the mainstream media: print, visual, or electronic. There is an impression that these regular incursions are no longer newsworthy. Only when both sides of the conflict eventually endeavor to make constructive movement are the media merchants going to return the conflict to their news plate.
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